


Settling Down isn't Settling For

by Isis_McGee



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU Mid Season 5, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Character Death, Curtain Fic, Domestic, M/M, Original Minor Characters - Freeform, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-03
Updated: 2015-09-03
Packaged: 2018-04-18 20:17:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4719092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isis_McGee/pseuds/Isis_McGee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When what seems to be an apocalyptic battle results in Sam and Dean not being able to hunt anymore, the two of them have to figure out what they want to do and who they want to be. In order to do that, they have to wander a while, put some affairs in order, and admit that they ought to settle down. Dean becomes a mechanic and Sam goes back to school and amidst the adjustments, they find out that while things may change, they also stay the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Settling Down isn't Settling For

**Author's Note:**

> This was written as part of the Wincest BigBang Challenge for 2015. I lucked out and got an amazing artist in Milly_Gal (onlj) and had a super helpful beta in soullessboyking (tumblr). Seriously, thank you Milly and Michelle!!

The world was supposed to have ended a year ago tomorrow, Sam noted when he looked at the calendar, but he didn’t know that the world as he knew it would end next Tuesday at 1:56 PM when he got home from his Greek class.

*** A year ago***

There were demons teeming everywhere around them, and just about every hunter they’ve ever even heard of was on that field trying to fight them off. The grass was stained with blood, and the air was thick with the stench of death. Hunters slipped on the soaked ground and there were shouts of pain coming from all sides, along with grunts of anger and groans of exertion. There was black smoke rushing to and fro, and Sam and Dean were back to back. No one knew where Lucifer was, or even if this was his doing.

It looked like a good old-fashioned war zone, the type where you couldn’t kill an enemy until you could look him dead in the eye as his life left him. Dean’d shot more demons at point blank range with the Colt than Samuel Colt could have ever dreamed of, and Sam’d sliced through as many demons’ throats with Ruby’s knife. Not all the bodies lying there, lifeless eyes neither black nor human, were cut down by the two of them, though. But not all of those bodies were ever sporting black eyes, either.  They couldn’t afford to think about that right then, though. Sam had already had to drag Dean out of the way of a swarm of demons taking Bobby down. They couldn’t do any more to stop his death than they could anyone else’s, and they still had a fight on their hands. They were both bleeding profusely, and Sam was fairly certain he had a sprained ankle; Dean, a dislocated shoulder.

Throughout the fight both of them had sent unconscious prayers toward Castiel that went in tangents toward any angel that was listening, but so far no one had responded. They hadn’t had any idea where the angels went for months, but they’d spent too long with Cas in their corner not to wish for him to come swooping down at that moment. But he didn’t. No one was coming.

They both accepted that, and Dean was the one to turn over his shoulder and look toward Sam, firing the Colt dead on the money while never taking his eye off his brother.

“Goin’ down swinging, huh, Sammy? Told you I would.”

Sam stepped forward to block a blow from a demon and slash out at its throat, the fire in its eyes burning out as its meatsuit bled. He tossed a look over to Dean.

“We’re not dead yet.”

But it rang false; neither of them had any faith that this isn’t the end, but Dean was right‒ they would go down swinging.

Except they didn’t.

Because the demons were falling, right where they stood. It didn’t come in a wave or like dominos, but all at once. One minute nearly every hunter left in North America was fighting for their life, and the next they were standing, weapons raised with nothing to hit.

Murmurs of confusion flooded the scene and Sam and Dean spun to face each other, their shock as evident as everyone else’s.

“Maybe one of the angels heard us?” Sam wondered aloud. Before Dean could say anything, there’s a flash of light, brighter than anything they’ve ever seen before and then there was darkness.

Sam and Dean searched the newspapers daily, scoured the web, thumbed through magazines, looked anywhere they could for some sort of hint about what happened. There was a supernatural warzone in the middle of Nebraska‒ it would have caused a commotion, should have made some ripples on the national scene, but there was nothing. They didn’t hear a word about it on the radio, no newscasters spoke about it on TV, nada. It was made worse by the fact that even other hunters couldn’t remember details. Every contact they tried said that “yeah, I was on a hunt in Nebraska. Pretty run-of-the mill-though.” Sam and Dean were baffled.

“We’re not losing it, right, Sammy?” Dean asked, hanging up on the fourth hunter he’d called that day who’d given them that story. He motioned to the waitress and raised his nearly empty pint glass. She nodded and Dean gave her a smile before turning back to Sam. “There was an almost-apocalypse. Again.”

Sam barely looked up from his phone, where he was scanning through some less mainstream news sites and crackpot blogs, and stabbed at his salad. He was chewing when he raised his eyes to Dean. Dean’s impatience showed on his face while Sam finished and swallowed. Dean had to wait even longer as the waitress came back with his beer.

“There was definitely an almost-apocalypse. But not according to the rest of the world.” Dean took a swig of his beer, his satisfaction that at least his brother remembered the same thing he did evident to Sam. “But what’s even stranger is I haven’t seen anything that looks like a case. In any of the sources we usually check. You notice that?”

Foam decorated Dean’s upper lip, and he paused as he was setting the glass back on the table. Sam gave him an imploring look as Dean cast his mind back to the stories he’d read in the last week. Sam watched it dawn on him.

“What the hell?”

“I don’t know.”

“No, seriously, what the hell?”

Spearing another bite of salad, Sam didn’t bother to reply. Dean didn’t push it and drank his beer in contemplation, polishing off the rest of his fries at the same time. His glass hit the table with a _thunk_ when he’d emptied it and Sam took that as a cue to push away the remains of his meal, only a half-eaten cucumber slice and smeared dressing with the browning edges of lettuce on the plate.

They paid with one of their newest credit cards, left the tip in cash on the table, and headed out the door. It was warm for March in northern Nebraska, but Sam hunched into his jacket more to fight the chill in the air. The gravel of the parking lot crunched under their feet on the walk to the Impala.

“No job, no responsibility‒ left or right?” Dean asked as he slid in and turned the key. The engine purred and Dean pointed the car in the direction Sam pointed. The afternoon sun was directly above them and they were headed east without any destination in mind.

*

They stopped in Austin, Minnesota the first night, trying not to think about Bobby, fallen on a battlefield no one remembers as they passed exits for Sioux Falls, then meandered south and stopped in Burlington, Iowa the next, always checking for signs that other people recalled what they do, always checking for something that might be a hunt. They crisscrossed back through Iowa and spent a night in Hiawatha, Kansas, the next day heading through Missouri and crossing into Illinois to stay on the outskirts of Carbondale.

They were aimless. It was far from the first time that they haven’t had a job on the horizon, but this felt different. There wasn’t anything they could think of to change it though, so Midwestern highways stayed under the rolling wheels of the Impala and jock-rock kept blaring from the speakers.

They let a week go by, having passed through most of the Midwest and stopping for a while finally in southern Wisconsin, close enough to big cities that they think they should have an ear to ground for anything up their alley. Then they started to make calls again, both feeling the itch for a hunt, and wondering who could help them out.

The answer turned out to be no one; even people they’d contacted before and had told them they’d had run of the mill hunts in Nebraska seemed to have forgotten that already too. Half the hunters they called said they didn’t know any Sam or Dean Winchester and hung up, while the other half said that they couldn’t help; they hadn’t gotten wind of a hunt and were retiring.

“Mason’s 30, how is he retiring?” Dean demanded as he got off the phone with one of the last of their contacts. Sam’s expression was just as baffled as Dean’s and he hesitated before pushing in the number for the last hunter in his phone. He didn’t press send.

“Are we on our own in this?” Sam said quietly after a moment. The set of Dean’s shoulder as he turned to face Sam reeked of defeat; Dean didn’t have to say anything for Sam to know the answer.  “Do I even bother calling Hank?”

“Fuck it, he’s probably gonna tell you he found some woman and he’s getting married next week with the way our luck is going.”

Sam’s laugh rang hollow in the musty motel room, and he set his phone onto the table, sliding it to the center out of his reach. Dean’s elbows were on his knees, hands hung between his legs, his head bowed. Sam mirrored his position unconsciously, but with his hands clasped. Neither of them said anything and neither of them knew how much time had passed, only that the light coming through the worn out curtains had shifted angles where it cut across the floor and the beds.

Sam’s mind had been racing, but he didn’t want to voice anything out loud yet. Instead he breathed deeply, sat up and asked, “What do you want to do, Dean?”

“Well, Sammy,” he started as he sat back in his chair, “I think we oughta get a bottle of whiskey and some pizza and find some shitty movie to make fun of. That’s all I want to plan for right now.”

Sam knew he wasn’t going to get anything more out of Dean that night, at least not sober, so he smiled and stood up when Dean did.  He tried not to admit how ready he was to drink with his brother and not think about what all of the last week meant for their future.

*

They spent a week in Milwaukee, in constant, varying levels of beer drunk and full of greasy food that made Sam run an extra mile every morning, and then they left, heading southwest hoping for some warmth and to avoid Chicago traffic on the way. They kept the grille of the Impala pointed in that direction and let the stagnation of the past week goad them into driving until they hit Kansas. They still didn’t have a plan, but somewhere in their subconscious, their birth state called to them.

Sam tried to start a conversation about what exactly they were going to do a few different times on the trek, but every time, Dean turned the volume up higher and sang a little more off-key. He gave up after getting shot down three times in seven hours and let Dean drive too fast down two lane highways without a true aim.

The next morning, after a night where Dean gave no insight to what he was thinking, Sam determined that he was through letting his brother shut him out. He timed it just perfectly so that Dean was waking up to the smell of coffee and McDonald’s breakfast, and the sound of the door locking shut.   

“Worried about burglars, Sammy?” Dean joked, rubbing sleep from his eyes as he sat up.

“More that you’ll want to bolt instead of talk.”

Dean wore a face of disgust as he crossed the room to get his breakfast. “We’re gonna start this already?”

“You’ve been avoiding it,” Sam said with a nod.

“I’m not avoiding shit, I’m just trying to have some fun while we’ve got this vacation.”

The excuse sounded hollow to Sam, and he knew it did to Dean too. He didn’t say anything until his brother finally sighed and spoke again.

“Look, I just don’t know what to say, Sam. I’ve got no fuckin’ clue what’s going on, so I got not clue what to do here. It’s like…” he trailed off and chewed his bottom lip in thought. “It’s like our parts are the same but we got dropped into someone else’s world where they don’t mean shit.”

Sam knew his brother was smarter than he acted, so he wasn’t surprised by what Dean said, only by the note of fear that was so raw and evident in his voice.

“I mean, everything was supposed to land on us and I’m not saying I want it to, but I’ve got no idea which way we’re supposed to be swingin’ now.”

“I think maybe we stop,” Sam told him, voice barely above a whisper. They’d both been thinking it and now someone had said it. “Maybe we don’t swing anymore. There’s nothing for us to fight now. Maybe there will be again someday, but right now…”

The defensive bravado Dean had been carrying around suddenly left; it fell from him heavily but it was Sam who felt lighter. Dean looked bereft as he munched on his McMuffin, and Sam worked on his own breakfast in silence, not wanting to push Dean one way or the other. By the time Dean spoke up, all that was left of the breakfast was crumbs and coffee grounds in the bottom of their cups.

“I think we gotta go to Bobby’s. Even if there aren’t any hunts and even if we don’t look for a reason for all this, we’ve gotta take care of his house somehow. We can’t just let it sit and rot.”

If Dean hadn’t suggested it, Sam would have, and he was glad they were on the same page. Bobby’d taken care of them for too long for them to leave his home to squander, not when it’d been their home in so many ways as well. No matter how painful it was going to be.

“It’s just too bad we drove all the way down here before figuring that out,” Dean said with a wry smile. Sam felt his heart swell at the expression; Dean’s smiles had been a complete façade since Nebraska, even when he’d been drunk. “You wanna head out now?”

Sam nodded and stood up. He tried to keep his expression neutral as he told Dean, “Actually, it’s a shorter drive from here.”

Dean scowled at his brother. “Why do you know that? Shouldn’t I be the one who knows that?”

Sam smirked and shrugged with one shoulder, getting up and starting to straighten up the few things he’d taken out the previous night. Dean snuck a foot out and tried to trip Sam as he went about his business and hid his smirk when Sam did stutter step to avoid falling onto his face. Sam glared and made sure to hit Dean in the back when he shouldered his bag. When Dean elbowed his way past Sam as the two of them left the hotel room, it was easy to pretend that things were like old times. Sam was shocked by how happy that thought actually made him as he slid into the passenger seat.

People always said that the Midwest all looked the same, and with anyone who had only seen it once or twice from the road, Sam could see where they were coming from. But he and Dean had grown to be connoisseurs of what America looked like from the highways. There were your typical any-town, USA stores every so often, but the actual lay of the land varied, just enough sometimes that Sam and Dean could tell. Sam knew when they crossed from Kansas into Nebraska, and he was fairly certain that if someone put money on it, he would be able to hustle them by knowing when they were switch-backing between Nebraska and Iowa as well. He wasn’t concentrating that hard though, instead trying to decide whether or not Dean would freak out at the question he wanted to ask. He decided to plunge in and ask it anyway.

“Do you ever think about what our lives could have been?”

Dean glanced over. “What? Without hunting?” Sam murmured in the affirmative and Dean went on. “With the way Mom died we were always gonna hunt down the son of a bitch that did it. If she hadn’t died, well, I’m sure we woulda stayed in Lawrence.”

“That’s it?”

“Yeah,” Dean shrugged. “You woulda went off to some Ivy League and become some big shot lawyer and I woulda worked in a garage and that woulda been it.”

Sam had no idea why that made his brother as defensive as it sounded, but he decided to let it go. With another murmur, he went back to looking out the window, feeling as though that would give Dean some semblance of space.

The longer he thought about Dean’s answer though, the more it didn’t sit right with him. It echoed Dean’s Djinn-induced world from years back, and he hated that idea.

“I just can’t see a world where we wouldn’t be close. At least, I don’t want to,” Sam said quietly. Dean bit his lip and didn’t say anything.

Sam thought even longer about Dean’s answer and he wasn’t sure that it reflected who they really were. But then, Sam wondered if who they were wasn’t too seeped in hunting for him to know who they would be without it. They were too seeped in being on the road, and being awake at 0500, and target practice after school, and meals on the run. Their father had seen to that.

The thing was, John hadn’t ever forgotten how to be a Marine, and Sam and Dean, for all they were their own soldiers in a different war, wouldn’t ever forget how to be a soldier’s sons. Sam thought about what it would have been like if Mary had died in some human way‒ in childbirth, in a car crash, in some sudden illness that swept her life away while he was too young to remember her. Before he knew it, he was voicing those thoughts.  He wondered who their father would have been if they’d learned to know him in one state, one city, one house.

“What do you think Dad would have done? Would he have just stayed a mechanic in Lawrence?”  

Dean shook his head, not letting Sam play the thought out fully. Sam expected to get a snappish reply about how it was no use wondering, since Dean seemed so tense from the question before, but what he got instead was something real.

“Dad would have gone back to the service, Sam. We wouldn’t have stayed in Lawrence.”

“Yeah? How do you figure?”

Dean shrugged again. “I remember him and Mom arguing about whether he should go back. He thought it would have been better money, better benefits for us.” He paused. “Without Mom, we were always gonna be on the road.”

Sam spent the rest of the ride wondering if they would be able to learn to stay in one place, or if they would invent reasons to get up and go now that there weren’t any immediate ones.

Any tension Dean had lost from the drive crept back up his spine when they made the turn onto the gravel road to Bobby’s. Sam clenched his hands in his lap. Both of them sat stock still in the Impala when Dean shut it off in the driveway, not looking at each other, just looking at Bobby’s house with the knowledge that he would never be there again.

They remained silent as they got out, slamming their doors simultaneously before heading up the steps. The door creaked as it opened and both of them stepped into the foyer.

“So what’s the plan here?” Dean asked, breaking the reverie they both had been in. Dean straightened his shoulders and pushed down what he was feeling and pretended this was a job. “You’re the only one who was even close to knowing Bobby’s complete lack of order, so you’ve gotta be in charge here, nerd.”

Sam pulled a bitch face and shoved past Dean, making his way to the bookshelf in the living room. He took a quick glance and turned his search to Bobby’s desk.

“He was probably already looking at something that would explain this, knowing Bobby,” Sam said as he settled behind the desk and began to scan through the pages the numerous books were open to. “Come take some of these and look.”

Dean didn’t protest and soon the two of them were deep in concentration, the only sound in the house the turning of pages and the occasional creak of the pipes.

*

Much to their frustration, there was nothing; they could not find a single explanation for what had happened. Neither of them would ever voice the idea that it could have been an actual act of God aloud, even if the thought crossed their minds.

They spent three days going through Bobby’s books to come to that conclusion and then started to box up anything they wanted, not thinking as they loaded those boxes into the Impala. The Impala was so full of the books they’d taken, they weren’t sure what else they would be able to fit in it. Sam wasn’t sure what good the books would actually be if things had changed as much as seemed to have, but on principle he couldn’t leave them behind. He’d fill one of Bobby’s junkers and follow the Impala if he had to, although to where he didn’t know. The two of them hadn’t discussed what they were going to do after they’d settled Bobby’s affairs. Tacitly, they’d agreed that they couldn’t stay there‒ they just wouldn’t feel right and they would always be waiting for a hunt to pop up and send them away. That wasn’t going to happen any time soon.

They boxed up Bobby’s dishes, and his linens, and cleaning supplies that may or may not have ever seen the light of day and piled them in the living room. They threw out the food in the fridge and drank the beers and sorted through everything in the house until the only thing they hadn’t touched were the photographs.

There weren’t a ton, not enough to fill a photo album, but there were enough. There was a wedding picture of Bobby with his wife, a few of just Karen around the house, one or two of the two of them together, and none of Bobby’s family other than that. But there were pictures of the three of them: photos John had snapped as they were growing up when he’d come get them from Bobby’s, marveling at his boys just being boys, that Bobby had gotten a hold of; photos Bobby’d taken of the two of them when they were doing something ridiculous; even one photo of them and Cas.

The last one they gathered up had sat on Bobby’s bookshelf for years at that point and both of them remembered taking it vividly; Bobby’d set a timer and come to stand with them in front of the Impala before they headed out on a lead on their dad. As the timer counted down, Bobby’d gruffly said, “If you find him give ‘im a big ole kiss for me and kick him in the ass,” and set them off laughing. The camera had caught that joy perfectly. Sam smiled as he took it from the shelf and placed it in the box; it was one of two photos that were in an actual frame.

“That sentimental old son of a bitch,” Dean said with a huff of laughter as he looked into the box before Sam taped it up. Sam didn’t point out that Dean had taken Bobby’s flask and slipped it into his duffle for the same reasons.

Neither of them looked at the house as they left it for what would be the last time, but as they drove away, ready to drop the keys off with a note at the police station and let them deal with it, both of them glanced in the rearview and said their goodbyes.

They spent another month on the road, unable to settle down into any one place for longer than three days. They drove from coast to coast, Dean deciding Washington was too rainy, Sam deciding New Mexico was too dry, Dean saying Georgia was too humid and no one could drive, Sam saying New Hampshire was too far away from everything else. Neither would admit that something inside of them was calling them back into the Midwest, where they’d seemed to have spent more time than anywhere else. Sam expected the Impala to point to Kansas on its own, but they were in west central Illinois when they stopped, not just for the night, but for good.

If anyone ever asked about their first few weeks there, neither of them would be able to give much information. It was a blur of familiar steps performed on a new stage with a new set. They’d rented houses before, more so when they were younger and John was around to do most of the work, but they’d never planned on staying there for longer than a couple months; though they never said it out loud, they did think it would be longer than that this time. There was no clock in their minds counting down until they needed to move, and neither of them knew how to handle that other than ignoring it completely and acting like this‒ being civilians‒ was another job.

They were close enough to a college town that it was easy to rent a house, and it was easy for Sam to pick up a course catalogue and browse it without thinking seriously about what he was doing. It was the middle of the semester anyway, and Sam just wanted to know what his options were if this were really it and the two of them were to be settled.

They bickered about furniture, whether to replace what was there or not‒ Dean wanted new mattresses and a new couch‒ and whether to decorate‒ again, Dean wanted to rig something up to display some of their weapons‒ but it didn’t feel like anything that different than what they were used it. Sam won about the furniture, though Dean did immediately go buy new sheets and a mattress pad, and Dean won about the decorations, since Sam wanted some of the pictures they’d taken from Bobby’s up.

The strangest thing about the whole situation, something they didn’t notice until the third night of being there, was that they signed papers using their real names. The house a mile down on Taft Street was being rented by Sam and Dean Winchester, previous address in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. They could sit out on the porch they had and drink beer and they didn’t feel worried that the FBI or the CIA or local police would come and harass them. It took four hours, in which they kept grinning and calling each other “Mr. Winchester” and all its variants to their childish amusement, for the fun of that to grow old.

“We need to hook that TV up and get some cable in here,” Dean told Sam as he downed the last swig of his beer. Sam snorted.

“That TV is about 40 years old, Dean. We can spring for a new one.”

That got Sam a blinding grin, and he felt a swoop in his stomach the same way everyone on the receiving end of that grin did.  It made him shake his head, unable to hold back his own small smile.

“Well, if you say so, Sammy.”

Dean sat in silence while Sam finished up his beer as well. Sam stood up and tossed his beer bottle over the railing of the porch into the blue bin for recycling that had been provided for them. They hadn’t had to set up garbage or recycling pick-up themselves, thank goodness, so Sam thought the least he could do was use a service they were getting either way.

“You’re so responsible,” Dean teased as he let his bottle crash into the bin as well. Sam rolled his eyes, still feeling a glow from the night.

“Are we going into town again for dinner tonight or should we maybe admit that we need to go grocery shopping?”

Dean shrugged. “Order takeout tonight. First thing tomorrow we’ll go grocery shopping. And pick up a TV.” He clapped a hand on Sam’s shoulder in joy and Sam couldn’t help but laugh. Dean could get excited about so little sometimes.

Sam spent the rest of the night listening to his brother rattle off all the things they could do to improve the house and how he could fiddle with the cable system to maybe get the pay channels for free, all in between bites of mu-shu pork and shrimp fried rice.

*

“When’s the last time either of us had an honest job?” Dean asked the next morning when they were at the checkout of the grocery store. It was some chain they’d shopped at hundreds of times before and they wouldn’t bat an eye about using a scam credit card to pay. Sam felt a slight twinge of guilt every time he bought locally grown tomatoes with what was essentially fake money.

“I bussed tables for that month we split up,” he reminded Dean quietly; he didn’t like to think about those few weeks. Dean nodded in remembrance and tossed a copy of the local paper onto the conveyor belt.

“Well, looks like we’re checking the wanted ads again. Guess it’s not that new for you.”

The girl working the line didn’t give much of a smile back to Dean when he turned his on her, but she did talk to them.

“If you need work right away and don’t mind heavy lifting, one of the Sig Phis got fired last week for stealing cigarettes.” Her tight dark curls bounced when she shrugged in accordance with the information. She did smile back at Sam when he thanked her for the information, and her teeth shone white against her dark skin.

Sam and Dean loaded their arms up with bags and kicked the cart back into the corral as they left and Dean turned to his brother with his eyebrows poised to tease him.

“She was flirtin’ with you, Sammy.”

Sam rolled his eyes and snorted. “She was barely 20, Dean. And she wasn’t flirting. Sometimes people are actually nice, you know?”

Neither commented on how empty the trunk looked without their full weapons stash as they loaded it with groceries. Sam however did get Dean back for the flirting comment by saying how proud he was of him for buying more food than booze; it was a mark of how good a mood Dean was in that he just scrunched up his nose in annoyance instead of shutting down in a pissy mood.

They managed to disagree with each other only twice about where something should go when they got home to unload the groceries‒ “The pickles weren’t in the fridge section, Sam!” “Pickles ought to be cold!”‒ but Dean had the paper open at the rickety kitchen table in no time. He’d yet to shed the habit of scanning through the whole thing looking for a hunt, but Sam wouldn’t say anything because he hadn’t either. It took little time and then Dean was at the want ads.

Sam watched his brother wrinkle his brow and scoff in disgust a few separate times for five minutes before he spoke up.

“What would you want to do, if you could do anything?”

Dean looked up and went a little slack-jawed as he considered the question.

“Professional wet t-shirt contest judge,” he said with a grin and a wink. Sam simply leveled a glare at him.

“I’m serious.”

“So am I,” Dean protested. Sam threw up his hands in frustration and reached to get a mug from the cupboard.  He was filling it up with water, getting ready to make another pot of coffee when Dean gave a serious answer. “Never thought I’d need to answer that question. Wanted to be a firefighter when I was little. Definitely don’t wanna do that anymore. Wanted to drive a racecar, but I don’t see that happening. And I don’t think the world needs a second Hugh Hefner yet. It’d be too dangerous.”

Sam knew that Dean could tell he was smiling at that even if he couldn’t see it. He popped the lid off the coffee can and waited for Dean to go on.

“I’d help people.”

It was such a simple answer and it floored Sam; of course that’s what his brother would do if he could do anything. His heart leapt to his throat and he had to swallow around it. Here he was, thinking that maybe they could settle down and the two of them could be safe, that maybe he could go back to school, for anything, maybe not even law, and Dean was hiding the fact that he missed the most important part of hunting.

No wonder people seemed to fall in love with Dean in spite themselves.

Sam flipped the coffee maker on and turned around to lean against the counter.

“What if I asked what you wanted to do just for you? You don’t owe anyone anything, Dean. We helped so many people. You saved so many people, including me. You can be happy.” Dean opened his mouth to speak, but Sam cut him off. “And there’s a ton of ways to help people. I mean, hell, bagging groceries helps people‒”

“Sam, I get it. Don’t sound so panicked.” Sam hadn’t realized he had sounded panicked, but he must have; Dean could read his moods better than anyone. “I’m not gonna go tear off and become a vigilante or something. If there’s nothing supernatural out there, I’ll leave the rest of it to the civilians.” Dean held a hand up to stop Sam. “The real civilians. The one’s who’ve been civilians for years.”

Sam stuck his hands into his pockets and shrugged. “I just worry, dude. You haven’t said much about this whole adjustment. I’m wondering if you’ve got a plan.”

“Yeah, I do. I’m good at two things, Sam, hunting and cars, and well, there’s nothing left to hunt. But college kids sure can fuck up their cars. It might not be keeping anyone from turning into a werewolf, but it’s worth something, right?”

Dean didn’t necessarily believe that quite yet, but the fact that he said it meant something, especially to Sam. The moment passed without comment.

“ _You_ got a plan?” Dean rounded on Sam.

“Not a full-fledged one, no. But there’s a bar down the road with a help wanted sign out front that I can look at while I figure it out. Within walking distance and everything so you could take the Impala wherever you needed to go.”

Dean narrowed his eyes at Sam, who projected an air of innocence and trustworthiness. Dean let it go and just nodded.

“Well okay then. Now that we’ve got that settled, we’ve gotta find a hardware store. This backdoor’s crooked on the hinges because they’re rusted to shit. Wanna find a Home Depot to rip off?”

“It might be time to start saying goodbye to that, you know,” Sam pointed out, straightening up and pushing away from the counter.  Dean stood up and grinned.

“Not yet, though. So come on, bitch.”

“Jerk.”

Four months in, they had a routine.

It hadn’t been hard for Dean to show up to one of the local garages in the Impala and get himself a job. He liked it, and was good at it, and made friends at the shop who he could go out and have a few beers with when he wanted. They gave him shit because there’d been a spike in sorority girls needing their cars looked at the first month Dean had been there, but when he’d done nothing more than flirt innocently back at them and not take any of them home or try to bend them over their hoods right there in the garage, the rumors about the hot new mechanic must have slowed.

The rumors of the sweet, tall bartender who worked in in the outskirts bar slowed at about the same time, but Sam still made good enough tips that he hadn’t felt that it was too much of a luxury to enroll in a folklore class that would remind him what it was like to be in college. It wasn’t the perfect job for Sam, but it gave him a chance to meet the locals and do something. He’d sat home trying to think of something else to do for the first couple of days that Dean had worked at the garage and he’d been miserable. He’d thrown a plate at Dean when he’d made a “honey, I’m home” joke the second day in a fit of anger that almost surprised both of them, and the next day he bit the bullet and smiled his way into a job.

At times, both of them wanted to scream. Dean took off in the Impala the second weekend they’d been there, going stir crazy in one place with no light at the end of a tunnel and having only dealt with co-eds and not monsters for weeks.

He’d called Sam in the middle of the night, drunk, and asked, “Was it all for nothing? Did we lose everything for no fucking reason, Sammy? Did we give up our fucking lives for fucking nothing?” He hadn’t listened to a word Sam had said back him. Even Sam wasn’t sure he’d believed himself when he’d hung up the phone and tried to sleep.

Days later, Dean had found Sam throwing knives at the wall in the walk-in closet, the holes making the pattern of a devil’s trap.

“You don’t want our deposit back, Sammy?”

“Fuck our deposit,” had been Sam’s only reply and he’d continued to throw the knives. When Dean checked back in on him later he’d finished the pattern and had used electrical tape to connect the dots. Neither of them said a word about it.

They couldn’t always talk about what they were feeling; being off the road hadn’t made it any easier at all, and neither knew where the other stood every day. Some days Sam would have a grin hinting at his mouth as he got ready for work and others he would hide his eyes from Dean as much as he could. Some days Dean would be his old self, full of innuendos and smirks, and others he walked around like he was being dragged to hell again. As time wore on, those feelings came fewer and further between though, and they realized they really were settling.

Sam made friends with the professor who lived in the next house over and her husband and frequently had to push away offers of baked goods, much to Dean’s dismay. Dr. Vance‒ Marilyn, she insisted they call her‒ and Jordan were lovely people who were more than willing to help Sam and Dean get acclimated to the neighborhood. They’d invited them over for dinner once a month since they’d gotten there, and Sam and Marilyn ended up talking about books while Jordan would talk sports with Dean. Of course, Jordan would keep an ear on his wife’s conversation and jump in when he had something to say, and Sam would do the same thing to his brother’s conversation. It was nice, and normal, and shockingly easy.

So easy in fact, that they forgot what it looked like from the outside.

“Let me help you,” Sam told Marilyn as she got up and began to stack plates to take to the kitchen after their February dinner. She smiled at him and nudged her husband so he would thank Sam.

“Thanks, Sammy,” Dean said without prompting when Sam took his plate. He had a content smile on his face and Sam was happy to see it. When Sam turned after flashing a quick smile back to him, Dean’s attention shifted to Jordan. “You said that Ford of yours was making a clicking noise?”

Sam could hear the scrape of chairs as the two men got up and headed toward the garage, speculating what could be going on with the car. Sam didn’t realize he was leaning against the sink listening until Marilyn huffed out a laugh.

“You two are so sweet together,” she started, letting the plates clatter in the sink and turning the water on. “How long have you been together?”

Sam was taken aback. He and Dean hadn’t been outwardly been mistaken for a couple in what felt like a long time and it seemed like it should have stopped once they weren’t splitting motel rooms and always together, but apparently not.

Marilyn’s eyes went wide when Sam sputtered. “Oh no, trouble? Something going on with you?”

“No,” Sam blurted. “No, nothing like that. It’s, um, we’re not together,” he told her, trying not to make it sound like a question. He pulled open their dishwasher and started loading the scraped plates into it. “Dean and I aren’t‒”

“Well, honey, why not?”

Sam was prevented from answering by a cacophony from the garage. Marilyn threw up her hands.

“Oh hell, I’d better go see what that was,” she said and headed that way.

Sam wracked his brain and tried to think of all the people they hadn’t used their last names with when they’d introduced themselves. The landlord they were renting the place from might have been the only person who knew, now that he thought about it.  It must have been out of habit.

Sam didn’t get the opportunity to tell Marilyn that he and Dean were brothers because she came in with Jordan and Dean trailing her while being reamed out for the burn marks on the garage door. Dean was trying to protest that he’d told Jordan to wait, but Marilyn wasn’t hearing it. Sam couldn’t help but laugh at how motherly she was and how much Dean was affected by it.

She’d still hugged both of them as they left and sent dessert with them. Dean was digging into the brownies as soon as the door closed and they were down the porch steps. Sam shook his head with a laugh.

“The one we had there wasn’t enough?”

“Fuck you, they’re delicious.”

Sam laughed again, and they listened for the hoot of the owl they knew lived in the giant tree between the two houses. It had been a long time since they’d lived anywhere long enough to recognize the wildlife and its habitat; Sam kind of liked it. They were both hunched inside their jackets to block the cold, though it’d been a strangely mild winter for Midwestern standards. Dean left his hands out of his pockets only long enough to scarf down the brownies on his plate and when he was finished, he balled up the paper plate and shoved it in his pocket with his hands. Their breath was visible.

“Dr. Vance thought we were a couple,” Sam said without preamble when they hit the gravel of their driveway. Dean turned and raised an eyebrow, but didn’t look too shocked other than that.

“Not the first time that’s happened.” Dean’s boots were loud on the steps but the creak of the third one was still audible. They’d meant to fix it when they first noticed it back in October.

“You don’t think it’s weird it happening here though? On the road I got it, but here…” Sam trailed off.

Dean shrugged and pulled open the door. Sam followed him and bent to unlace his boots. He could hear Dean getting his jacket off and hanging it up.

“I think a couple of the guys at work think so too. None of ‘em have ever brought it up so I can’t correct ‘em, but I think I heard whispers one day. Especially when I didn’t take that Kappa girl who was practically throwing herself at me up on her offer.”

“How come you didn’t take up any of those girls’ offers?” It wasn’t what Sam had meant to ask, but he was suddenly curious.

“I’m not gonna shit where I eat, Sam. Not when we’re here pretty permanently.” Dean immediately backtracked, “Or what feels like pretty permanently.”

Dean kicked his shoes onto the towel they used as a mat in the entryway. He turned back to Sam.

“Did you correct Dr. Vance when she asked about it?”

Sam nodded and pulled the garbage out of Dean’s pocket where he’d left it. He tossed it into the trash can next to the kitchen counter even though it didn’t have a bag in it from when Dean had emptied it earlier before he responded.

“I told her we weren’t together, but I didn’t get the chance to explain that we’re brothers and that’s why.”

Dean cracked a grin.

“Oh that’s why?” His eyes glittered as he teased Sam. “You mean if we weren’t brothers you’d wanna get on this like everybody else, Sammy? When we were in that crazy world where we worked in that office, you wanted your boss Dean Smith?”

“You done?” Sam asked, annoyance radiating off of him.

“I mean, who says I would even want you, bro? Thinking awfully high of yourself aren’t you?”

Sam shook his head in irritation and picked up the roll of paper towels on their counter to throw at Dean. Dean laughed and batted them away.

Sam tried not to wonder if there was any veracity to Dean’s statement. Sure, Sam knew his brother was an attractive guy in the objective sense, and if he were brutally honest with himself he’d admit that there had been times that Dean had popped into his mind at the least appropriate moment, but that didn’t mean anything. It meant only that they’d had a fucked up way of life, if it did. Sam told himself he was sure of that.

“You’re a dumbass, you know that?” Sam finally said. Dean’s grin back was obnoxious and he didn’t let it fall until Sam had to hold back a smile of his own.

“You got homework or anything? I know you love getting it done early, even on weekends, since you’re a big nerd and all.”

"No, I’m good on the homework front, Dean. Just some reading I can get done Sunday."

"You sure? You could do it now."

"Fuck off," Sam laughed. Dean smiled.

"Wanna keep watching the Terminator movies then? I think TNT is still playing them."

Sam thought for a moment about telling Dean that they'd seen all of those movies so many times that he was sick of them, but he realized that it wouldn't be true. They _had_ seen them so many times that he should be sick of them, but the prospect of sitting on the couch and drinking a couple beers with his brother seemed so appealing that he didn't care what they were doing. That much hadn't changed since they had settled down. Dean was still his best friend, no matter how much of a jerk he could be.

"Yeah, alright. Beer?"

Dean nodded as he flopped onto the couch and flipped on the TV. He didn't have to change the channel at all and luckily, the second movie was just starting; they'd made it only about twenty minutes into it last night before they'd both started falling asleep.

When Sam handed a beer to Dean and popped the top of his own as he sat, Dean made a vaguely grateful sound. It took only three seconds before he had some ridiculous commentary about the movie and the credits had barely shown up on the screen, and Sam was happy. He was so happy that it should have surprised him. This maybe wasn't what their lives were supposed to have been, but it was good to feel safe and normal and be with his brother. He knew he was smiling like a fool, and he just hoped Dean didn't ask him about it.

Dean wouldn't, because he was just as happy, even if his thoughts didn't articulate it in such a way.

Four months in and life was alright.

*

The school semester finished and not too much had changed. Sam was looking at other classes he could take in the summer and had tried to talk to Dean about taking classes as well. Dean laughed in his face, but Sam saw him looking through the catalogue a few times as he was drinking his coffee in the mornings before going into the garage.

He conceded to taking a cooking class, and Sam had to hide a smirk the entire conversation they had about it. His smirk was less pronounced after Dean came home from the first class with a first class pasta salad with roasted corn and arugula and pesto and a chicken that had been grilled to perfection. From the first taste, Sam didn't have a bad word to say about Dean taking a cooking class.

Dean however, had a lot to say about Sam taking beginning Greek.

"Why do you need to learn that now?" he asked. The emphasis on _now_ was understood, even if Dean didn't say it like that. Sam simply shrugged; it connected what their lives had been to how they were now, and Sam appreciated that more than he'd ever expect to.

Dean spent his days at the garage and went to his cooking class once a week, and Sam went from his class to home for a few hours before heading to the bar. There didn't seem to be that big of a difference in business despite the fact that all the college kids had gone home for the summer.  Plus he didn't have to get hit on quite as much. It was a good life.

The two of them went so far as to throw a barbeque for their neighbors around July 4th and Dean showed off some of the skills he'd been learning. Sam found himself bragging that Dean had always been a decent cook, even when he only had convenience store ingredients to work with and telling some of their friends about the ways he'd gotten creative with mac and cheese to please Sam when they were younger. Dean brushed off the praise when he heard it, his cheeks turning just a little pink when Tyree, one of the garage owner's sons and the bookkeeper for the business teased him for his domesticity. Sam didn’t notice that some of the ladies were smiling at him in a specific way as he went on about Dean and grinned at him as he took a second burger- seasoned with a mix of spices Dean refused to tell anyone about.

Things went on as they had been, with days where they didn’t want to acknowledge that they missed the way things had been: the open road in their eyes and the mission in their hearts and the weapons in their hands. They were days that Dean went out into the field behind their neighborhood and shot bottles off the remains of a fence that had once held in livestock with his m1911 or Sam sharpened his knives without any purpose in mind. Neither of them ever said anything about it when the other one went off silently. Those days came few and far between, anyway.

Most days they were together.

It’d been almost a month that either of them had felt the need to be on their own when a storm hit them. Sam was at work, serving the regulars and a woman who was apparently being considered for a professorship at the college. She was beautiful, short with auburn hair, a button nose, and rich brown eyes, and she couldn’t stop smiling at Sam whenever he asked her if she needed another Manhattan or any more food. Just about everyone else had left and he was asking again, telling her the kitchen was about to close just in case she wanted to carb up before having to drive to her hotel, when the door opened  and showed the nastiness of the weather.

“Maybe I won’t be able to drive back to my hotel,” the woman told Sam with a smile that verged on a leer. The look distracted Sam from realizing that the door had opened to admit Dean into the bar. “Are you gonna help me get someplace to stay then, Sam?”

Sam looked away from her and took a sip of the whiskey he’d poured himself ten minutes ago at her insistence. He heard Dean snort then and looked up. Dean was eyeing the woman and smirking.

“Don’t let me interrupt, Sammy,” he said when he caught Sam’s eye.

The woman‒ Gina Harrison, she’d said‒ looked between the two of them and her eyes narrowed.

“Dean, Gina Harrison, she might be an anthropology professor here next year. Gina, this is Dean.” If anyone would have asked him why he didn’t say ‘my brother,’ he would not have been able to tell them. He turned to Dean with his full attention then. “What are you doing here?”

“Give me a whiskey, will you? And I’m here because I wasn’t going to let you walk home in this storm. I wouldn’t do that to you,” Dean said.

“Thanks,” Sam told him as he poured a generous glass for him.

“Sam, you think I could get an order of fries to go before the kitchen closes? I don’t want to be stranded here over some bar food,” Gina said. Her tone had completely shifted from what it had been. Sam didn’t want to examine why this new attitude made him feel so much more at ease, especially with Dean around.  Sam nodded and went to tell the cook, Nate, that all he needed was an order of fries started and then he could head out for the night. Nate thanked him and slapped his hand; he was a nice guy, and he and Sam got along well; he trusted Sam in his kitchen when he wanted to get out as early as he could.

“Dean, go ahead and get behind the bar if either of you need anything,” Sam called as he searched through the freezer once Nate was out the door. Dean would probably go crazy for the onion rings they had since they’d changed the recipe and Sam knew they had to have a premade batch somewhere in there. “If you take anything from the top shelf, you’d better pay for it, though!”

“Yeah, yeah,” he heard Dean call back.

Sam found the onion rings and dropped them into the fryer. Gina’s fries were done and he got them into a to-go container for her and headed back to the bar. She was digging money out of her purse.

“Hey, no, fries on me,” Sam told her with a kind smile. She gave one back to him and then turned the look to Dean.

“Your boy is sweet. Thanks for letting me borrow him for the night.” Both Sam and Dean were flabbergasted by her matter of fact tone. Sam hadn’t processed what she was saying by the time she turned back to Sam. “You should have let me know you weren’t available. I still would have tipped you just as well,” she smiled.

Sam and Dean just looked at each other as she maneuvered her denim vest up over her hair to venture out into the storm. There was a beat where Sam was working himself up to saying something, but Dean beat him to it, and the topic was completely unexpected.

“You got control of the juke box or am I gonna have to pay to hear some Zeppelin?”

“What?” Sam asked, completely floored by confusion. Dean started to repeat himself but Sam cut him off. “I heard you, I just meant, why? Did the power go out at home?”

“No, but I figured I’d keep you company here, man. You still got an hour before you’re supposed to close up right?”

Dean said it like it was obvious and logical, and Sam felt suspicious.

“There’s nobody in here except us, it’s storming like crazy outside, and you’re worried about staying here until closing time? What the hell happened to you, man? You woulda been telling me to blow off the last hour and steal a bottle while I was at it, six months ago.”

It hit Sam before Dean could even point it out. He didn’t say anything about it, just went to the computer behind the counter and pulled up what controlled their music.

“What song did you wanna hear? ‘Levee,’ like you always do when it rains like this?”

Dean was grinning at his brother in a way that made Sam unsure if he wanted to punch him or cuff an arm around him in fondness. It would make anyone melt a little.

The song started and Sam queued up a few others and then came from behind the bar with his whiskey to sit next to Dean. They sat in companionable silence through the introduction and one round of the chorus before Sam spoke up.

“Are we staying here forever?” He didn’t look over at Dean, but he felt him tense up. “I don’t think I’d mind if we did. I like this town. I like the school. I like the people. It’s not so bad.”

“I know that, Sam.”

Sam ran a hand through his hair; it was longer than it had ever been and he liked it now that he didn’t feel like he had to worry about it being a liability. He turned his attention to Dean. “I just mean, are we admitting that we’re never going to hunt again?”

Dean looked down at his glass before he emptied it in one long drink, Sam noticing his Adam’s apple bobbed the same way it always did when he was nervous. He licked his lips before he said anything, his head once again down, shoulders slumped.

“Yeah,” he whispered. Sam barely heard him, but then he cleared his throat. “Yeah, we’re admitting we’ll never hunt again. There’s nothing to hunt.”

Sam reached over the bar and grabbed the neck of the bottle of whiskey to fill Dean’s glass again. Dean took another sip as soon as it was full.

“Even if there was something to hunt, I think we’re done.”

Sam let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding in the back of his mind for six months. Dean wore an amused expression when he glanced over at Sam.

“And I kind of like this place, too, you know. It still doesn’t feel real, this not hunting thing and staying in one place this long, but it’s really not so bad.”

“That’s exactly how I feel too, Dean. I only ever wanted to be safe.” Sam was just about finished with his drink as well, and when he heard how bad the storm was raging outside, he poured himself more.  

“You say that,” Dean started, half grin on his face, “but you want the rest of it don’t you? Some girl to marry, some kids to spoil and try to keep away from my bad influence, the house and the picket fence.”

Sam hadn’t realized how long it had been since he’d even thought of a life like that until Dean asked. He shook his head and then shrugged at Dean. “I don’t know. Maybe. But I don’t know. I want to be able to figure out what I want. Is that enough?”

Dean’s expression softened and he held his glass out for his brother to clink. The two of them savored the taste of their alcohol and the company they had.

“Yeah, Sammy. That’s enough.”

*

“August is like, the Sunday of summer, you ever realize that?”

Sam burst out laughing when Dean said it. Dean nudged his arm.

“I’m serious, man! It’s like the last moment to get all your summer stuff in before you gotta do all the shit you should have been doing before you gotta go to school.”

“Dean,” Sam started to sputter, “what the hell? You don’t go to school.”

“Yeah, but you do. And all those college kids who are gonna fuck up their cars on that pothole on George Street do. So I gotta deal with it.”

The two of them were in the kitchen, Dean with one hand wrapped around a beer bottle and the other digging through their spice rack (Sam still couldn’t believe they had a spice rack), and Sam marking things in on the calendar. Sam let the pen fall and it swung on the string that connected it to the calendar. He turned and looked at his brother.

Dean was wearing the apron Sam had gotten him as a joke‒ one of those gags that tried to make it look like you were wearing only some pink frilly underwear with six-pack abs‒ and he looked ridiculous. But his arms were tan and his hair was a little long like he’d worn it when they were younger and even more importantly, there was a look of tranquility in the light of his eyes. Sam wanted to see that look every day for the rest of his life. Sam wanted to see _Dean_ every day for the rest of his life.

“School starting isn’t going to make our lives much different, Dean. You’ll go to work the same everyday.”

“Yeah, but there’ll be more people on campus with you,” he pointed out. There was a note of something that Sam couldn’t pick out in his voice. It was gone when he continued. “I mean, you aren’t gonna just be taking one class with a bunch of weird geeks who wanted to take some dead language during their time off. There’ll be non-losers.”

Sam hip checked Dean with a scowl and Dean grinned cheekily back at him.

“Don’t call me a loser; you’re the one in an apron.”

“Don’t be jealous, bitch. I’m also the one about to make you the best steak you’ve ever had.” Dean brandished the seasoning in his hand like a weapon as he pointed it at Sam. Sam rolled his eyes. “And I also got some pineapple to grill, since you insist that steak and more steak isn’t a healthy enough meal. There might even be some lettuce in there if you need salad.”

The thought that if this scene were taking place with Jess instead of Dean, Sam would have leaned over and kissed her ran through Sam’s mind, followed closely by the bizarre thought of _do it anyway._ He shook his head to clear that idea.

Sam cleared his throat. “You ever grill a pineapple?”

Dean didn’t bother with a verbal response; he just rolled his eyes.

“But what’s all the worry about summer ending?”

Dean shrugged. “Just that we ought to enjoy it being quiet around here for a little while more, I guess.”

That tone was back in Dean’s voice again. Sam still couldn’t place it. He nodded, but he wasn’t sure that was all Dean had meant.

Their dinner that night was just as delicious as Dean’d said it would be.

Fall came, and with it brought the first semester where Sam was once again a full time student. They’d received a check in the mail with a letter from Sheriff Jody Mills, detailing that Bobby Singer had left them everything he had, which was a considerable amount given his circumstances, and Dean thrust the money into Sam’s hands and told him to go back to school for real. He would brook no argument, ignoring any that Sam would try to bring up until Sam stopped trying and signed up for his classes. There were only so many he had to take to finish the degree he’d started at Stanford, and there wouldn’t be many more even if he decided to pursue something different. He still hadn’t made up his mind about that.

Collectively, they had made up their mind about the improvements the house needed‒ they’d fixed the creaky step, and they’d finally patched up the devil’s trap in the closet wall, and they’d spent one weekend installing a garbage disposal and congratulating each other on not destroying their whole kitchen in the process. Sam had even broken down and let Dean go pick out a new couch. He was glad he did the first time he fell asleep over a book he was supposed to be reading for class and his back didn’t kill him from having a spring shoved into it.

The day to day was fairly similar; they always checked with each other for their plans for the night, and most often spent their time together. They’d spent almost their whole lives stuck together and were doing it now by choice, but Sam never found it monotonous. Dean, with the way his eyes crinkled up as he told Sam stories about the customers they had, or the things his fellow mechanics did, didn’t seem to either. That was exactly why it was so difficult for Sam to comprehend what was going on when he returned home from Greek that Tuesday in early October.

Sam brought his messenger bag to his room, just as he did every day he came home from class, and he checked his calendar to make sure he was right about not having to work that night. He saw he had the next two days off and breathed a sigh of relief; he had a paper to put the finishing touches on before Monday and he was glad he’d have the time.

“Hey, what are you doing tonight?” he called to Dean as he started back down the hallway. Dean was reaching into their pantry to get a bag of tortilla chips and he came into Sam’s view just as he was scooping handfuls out to put in a bowl.  

Dean didn’t answer.

“Hey,” Sam repeated, joining Dean in the kitchen area, “do you have plans tonight?”

Dean turned to look at his brother then. “Do you?”

Sam wrinkled his nose in confusion and annoyance and waited for Dean to actually answer his question. He didn’t though.

“What the hell, man, I just want to know what we’re doing tonight. Did you have dinner plans or are nachos it? It’s not that difficult of a question.”

Dean crinkled the bag of chips closed and his lips were pursed. He shrugged.

“I hadn’t made any plans,” he said. His voice was flat and aggravation radiated off of him. He crossed the kitchen to the pantry cupboard to put the chips away. “Do what you want.”

“I don’t know what’s got you so mad, but you need to get the hell over it,” Sam told his brother, an edge to his voice that hadn’t been there in a long time. This had come out of nowhere in Sam’s mind; he’d done nothing different than he had any other day he’d come home after class.   

Dean slammed the cupboard closed and turned to stare at Sam. His mouth was set in an angry line.

“Have you made friends in your classes at all, Sam?”

Sam wrinkled his nose. “What? What does that have to do with anything?”

“Just answer the question.”

“No,” Sam bit out, shaking his head, “no, I haven’t really made friends in class, but what the hell does that have to do with what’s got you so pissy?”

"What's got me so pissy?” Dean was incredulous and demanding. “What the hell's up with you? You don't go out and do shit, Sam! And you act like I've asked you not to! Like I'm making you stay here with me to keep me company and I never asked you for that. I wouldn't! I don't want you to fuck up your life for me. Again. So don't you put that on me." Dean's voice shifted throughout his speech, one second angry and loud and the next quieter with guilt and disappointment evident.

He yanked the silverware drawer open with a loud rattle and stopped looking at Sam. Sam himself was reeling; he had no idea where Dean had gotten any such impression that he was holding Sam back from doing anything.

"What the hell, Dean? I don't think any of that!"

Dean shot a withering, disbelieving look at Sam and Sam threw his hands out wide.

"When the hell did I ever say anything like that? Tell me exactly when."

Dean turned away from the counter and gave Sam his full attention, ignoring the bowl full of chips he'd been going to spoon dip into before this whole thing had happened.

"When haven't you? Jesus, Sam, you act like I'll crumble without you here. You're always asking what I want to do for this meal, or what my plans are for the night and I don't want to be responsible for that all the time. You can do what you want to do! You’re back at school! You should do what you want to do like you did before! Get yourself a girl and a life and‒"

"Oh my fucking god," Sam said under his breath.

"What?" Dean demanded. "What?"

"You are so fucking stupid, Dean."

"Fuck you, Sam. Just because-"

"I ask you that because I want to be with you! It's not out of some sort of courtesy. I don't feel bad for you, like you can't go out and do things without me! God, Dean, I know you can. I know you could be going out with the garage guys, or going on a date, or doing whatever you want! But if you're not then I want to hang out with you! Don't make me into some martyr for not wanting to try to find some awkward date with some civilian girl younger than me! I just want to be with my brother!"

Dean still looked doubtful, and completely at that.

"You don't have to lie-"

"Dean, I'm not lying!" Sam shouted finally. He ran a hand through his hair and took a deep breath to calm himself down. He repeated himself, but much more quietly. "I'm not lying."

"Fine," Dean said and turned back around to the cupboard. He bent down and grabbed a jar of cheese dip to finish making his food and Sam could see from the set of his shoulders that he still didn't believe him. Sam walked toward him, nearly crowding into his space against the counter. He got a hand on Dean's shoulder and turned him around, leaving his hand there and forcing Dean to look him in the eye.

"I didn't ask what your plans for dinner were out of pity. I didn't ask to see if it was something I could get out of. I have no other plans tonight. I get home from class and my thought is always 'I wonder what Dean wants to do tonight.' Always."

He paused and tried to read whether or not Dean was trusting the veracity of his words.

"You are my best friend, Dean. You always have been. Even at Stanford, when I had other friends, when I had Jess, I missed you so damn much some days that it hurt."

"You left, Sam," Dean said, barely above a whisper, "and I dragged you back into a life you hated. And I know you only stayed because you knew I wanted you to."

Sam was shaking his head, but Dean was looking down at the crease in the linoleum right in front of the sink.

"And I know you're doing it again, now. Sam, I know that six months ago you told me you like this town and that you liked this school, but you went to Stanford. I know how good a school that is in comparison to here. You're too smart for all this nonsense. Way too smart for it.”

"Dean‒" Sam tried to interrupt, but Dean wouldn’t let him.

"Let me finish. You're too smart to be here, and be bartending at some dive bar just because I'm a mechanic with no formal training. You ought to take the rest of that money that Bobby left us and go live your life somewhere else, man. Go back to Stanford. Meet some bombshell genius of a girl and do what you want attached to someone who isn't just dead weight for you. I don't want to hold you back, Sam."

"You're being so fucking dumb," Sam told him finally. Dean straightened up completely and looked annoyed. "I just told you that you're my best friend."

"Only because what other choice do you think you have, Sam? We spent years on the road with each other and now you've stuck it out here with me, but I'm telling you‒"

"You're telling me a bunch of shit you don't need to tell me. I told you before I don't know that I want that."

"Yeah, but-"

"No, shut up, Dean. I know you think you know what's best for me, but you don't. You don't know what I want better than I do." At Dean's skeptical look, Sam smirked a little bit and shook his head. "You really don't."

The two of them stood there in silence for a moment, not really looking at each other but not really looking away either. They simply stood in each others' space, Sam's hand having fell from Dean's shoulder back down to his side. Neither of them thought of moving.

"Okay," Dean said eventually. "Then tell me what you do want, Sammy. I don't want to have to keep guessing and I don't want to fuck anything up for you. I want you to do what you want, be with who you want. We don't have to stay here or anything."

Sam took a deep breath and something that had been in the back of his mind for months now, ever since that night that Marilyn Vance had asked if he and Dean were together and why not, if not since before then, came out.

"I don't care where we are as long as we're together, Dean. I only want to be with you. That's all." Sam let out a short bark of laughter. "Shit, Dean. I might be in love with you."

Dean stared at him, visibly keeping his jaw from dropping.

"What?"

Sam started laughing, nerves getting the best of him. He couldn't believe he'd just said that out loud. But now that he had, he recognized how true it was. He'd only ever needed his brother, really. He may have thought otherwise when he was younger, but now? Now he knew that Dean was it. No one else would ever be able to compare to the things they'd seen together, who they'd been together. And that trumped anything else.

Dean looked almost offended when Sam was laughing and Sam waved a hand at him.

"I'm not laughing at you, Dean. I'm not joking with you."

"Then what the hell are you laughing about?" Dean asked, confusion still clear in his eyes but his mouth quirking up into a smile that told Sam he was about to start laughing too.

"Because who falls in love with their brother? God, I'm still so fucked up." And then he was laughing even harder, nearing uproarious levels. He couldn't stop himself.

"We're still so fucked up," Dean corrected, and he stepped forward even further into Sam's space and kissed him.

It lasted long enough that Sam stopped laughing to kiss back and curl his arms around Dean's back to bring him even closer. When Dean broke off the kiss, his breath was a cross between a laugh and a sigh. The two of them laughed softly then, still wrapped together.

"Now what's so funny?"

"God, could we have been doing this for years, Sammy? Are we that stupid?"

Sam was laughing again, and he nodded when he could.

"We might be."

Both of them thought it was hilarious. And both of them knew that what they had known had ended, but they could only look forward to it.

***

Life didn’t change much for them, though it was a completely different world at the same time; Sam went to class and work sometimes and Dean went to work and they fixed up what needed to be fixed on the house. Sam planted a garden when the season came and Dean made fun of him for it, but was the first to use the tomatoes that ripened. The only real difference was that they stopped worrying that the other one was going to leave them as soon as the time was right. Neither of them worried that they were dragging the other down, and for the most part, they recognized that they were right where they wanted to be.

They briefly toyed with the idea of heading somewhere else for Sam to finish school, but he’d ensconced himself in the lifestyle where he was; Dean had too, whether or not he admitted it. They were happy.

Of course, the major increase in sex didn’t hurt either of their moods either, but it was more than that.

Both of them could be in one place‒ the porch they’d repaired themselves, the couch they watched crappy monster movies on, the bedroom they now shared and spooned in even though they’d never call what they did cuddling‒ and know each other and themselves to the point where they could say exactly what they wanted: the person right next to them.

And that was enough. 


End file.
